


The Princess and the Bear

by valamerys



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Body Hair, F/M, Nessian - Freeform, Nesta's Thirst (TM), Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8803729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valamerys/pseuds/valamerys
Summary: And Rhysand, the most powerful High Lord in Prythian history, death incarnate, night triumphant, replies, “We’re waxing Cassian’s chest.”A silly Nessian oneshot wherin Cassian is kinda hairy.





	

The boys like to spar on the roof, and Nesta, purely coincidentally, likes to read up there at the same time, facing their direction. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that they’re all shirtless and gloriously sweaty, of course. But if she’s being honest, Nesta hasn’t even glanced at the book she’s opened—fairy tales, she’s pretty sure—just began watching the three of them over the top of it. 

More than admiring the male physique, it becomes an exercise in sulking about the fact that Cassian is more ridiculously good-looking than anyone has a right to be. He’s not even shaped like a person, Nesta thinks as she watches him fend off blows from both his brothers, he’s shaped like a winged upside-down triangle, broad, broad shoulders tapering to a thin straight waist, all the way down to the V of his hips that makes her mouth water. And, ugh, his arms—if they belonged to anyone but Cassian, Nesta would let herself indulge in wondering what they’d feel like holding her up against the wall during… activities.

He’s surprisingly hairy, Cassian is, much more than Az or Rhys (although Nesta is 98% certain Rhys manscapes, just a little bit). He’s always been handsomely stubbled, but the rooftop sessions have made her aware of the significant amount of hair on his forearms and chest, and the thick black trail that leads down beyond the waistband of his pants that Nesta, if she is being honest with herself, wants to follow with her tongue. 

She’s trying to squash that thought when she suddenly realizes she’s looking at only Rhys and Azriel, the object of her sexually frustrated derision vanished.

A wing reaches out in front of her, blocking her view, and Nesta snaps her head to the side to glare at Cassian. He’s stretching luxuriously, wings splayed out fully and arms rippling as he looks casually out over the view.

“Do you want something, Cassian?”

“Just thought I’d check in, ask how the ogling’s going.” He shoots her a cheeky smile, coming to stand next to her and resting an elbow on the ledge where she sits. “Maybe see if you wanted a closer view.”

“I came up here to read, idiot, try to turn your ego down a couple hundred notches,” Nesta snaps, trying not to look at the broad expanse of his abs, or the way his hair is half-escaping the bun he’s thrown it into.

“Mm hm.” Cassian slowly reaches out, takes Nesta’s book, flips it right-side up, and hands it back to her, eyebrows raised. “Definitely reading.”

Face burning, Nesta slams it shut. “In the human realm, we learn how to read upside-down.”

He barks out a laugh as Nesta shoves off the ledge, heads for the stairs, anything to get away from him and his stupid beautiful arms.

“You know If you want to join us, Nesta, all you have to do is ask.” He keeps pace with her easily on his much larger legs, ambling backwards as he smirks at her. “Although in the interest of fairness, you should be topless too.”

“Pig,” she snarls.

“Ah, but a very handsome one.”

Nesta could leave it there, could storm off and let him laugh, but that would be letting him win. And that, she cannot do. So she stops cold, glares at him.

“I see now why I always lose sparring with you.”

“Because I’m bigger and have six hundred years of experience on you? Or because, as we’ve established, I’m distractingly good-looking?”

“Because it’s hardly fair to expect me to go up against someone who’s half _bear,”_ she says, with a sneer and a gesture at his hairy chest.

Cassian laughs at this too, deep and full, and it _does_ things to Nesta, and she hates it, hates it, hates it. She’d fling him from the stupid roof if he wouldn’t just fly right back up with a smug expression.

“Well, you know all about bears, right?” He points to her book. “They have the one in there about the princess getting kidnapped by a bear, who turns into a very handsome prince with a _very_ large cock?”

Nesta's lip curls up. If he means to make her blush and cower with his obscenity, he has another thing coming. “Of course,” she says smoothly, “But you seem to forget that the princess has to kiss the bear first. And personally—” she draws in distractingly close to him, lets her voice drop lethally soft, “—I don’t think I could ever stomach kissing something with that much hair.”

She backs away, noting vaguely that Az and Rhys have paused their fake combat to watch the real thing.

Cassian doesn’t seem to notice them, focused on Nesta with intensity that might have made a lesser woman crumble. But he doesn’t have a comeback, and Nesta smirks as she meets his gaze before turning and heading for the stairs.

She hears Rhys laugh before she’s out of earshot. “And Nesta wins again! Az, what’s the current tally?”

“Whose side are you on, Rhys?” Cassian gripes.

 

——————

 

It sounds like an animal is dying.

Nesta is back early from the Spring Court, where she was helping Elain decorate for her and Lucien’s anniversary, and as she comes through the front door, the townhouse rings with some horrible ripping sound, followed by miserable grunts and the sounds of what might be Azriel’s voice.

Nesta follows it back to Cassian’s room, and almost collides with Rhys as he comes around the corner with an armful of… bandages?

“Why Nesta, you’re back early,” Rhys says brightly, looking like there’s some joke that only he’s in on.

“… Yes, Elain didn’t need as much help as I thought. _What_ is that awful sound?” Another cry rings out, louder this time; Elain looks towards the door in alarm.

And Rhysand, the most powerful High Lord in Prythian history, death incarnate, night triumphant, replies, “We’re waxing Cassian’s chest.”

“Ow! Mother’s tits, Az, what did you _do_ to that one?”

Nesta, mouth fallen open, follows Rhys to the doorframe to see Azriel holding a long cotton strip covered in short black hair. Which is what Rhysand’s holding—discarded strips of Cassian’s body hair. Cassian himself is groaning, lying on his back with a pillow held over his face and fat horizontal pink strips of naked flesh criss-crossing his torso.

“Apparently he’s gotten it into his head to court someone who doesn’t like body hair,” Rhys says, raising his eyebrows knowingly at Nesta. “We’re assisting.”

The whole situation is so ridiculous Nesta can’t do anything but gape as Azriel gives her a close-lipped grin and nudges Cassian with his knee.

“Cas, look who’s back early.”

Cassian gives a grumpy, pain-addled grumble before moving the pillow from his eyes, and when he does, and sees Nesta, his face goes perfectly slack.

Nesta can’t help it, she bursts out laughing.

She laughs as hard as she’s ever laughed in her life, until her eyes fill with tears and her knees buckle with it—she ends up, snot-nosed, sitting on the ground against the wall, wracked with incapacitating giggles, until she finally manages to ask, “Cas, are you doing this because I said you were too hairy for me to kiss?”

Azriel and Rhysand have made themselves scarce at some point during her hysterics, and Cassian is sitting up, looking like he’s been laughing himself.

“No, I’m doing it to woo a different ice princess who explicitly said I was too hairy for her to kiss,” he says fondly.

“Cassian, you idiot. I don’t care about your stupid body hair.” She takes a deep, cleansing breath, lets the truth reluctantly worm its way out of her as she tips her head back against the wall. “I actually kind of like how hairy you usually are.”

He doesn’t respond, and eventually she looks at him again, at the angry, bald patches of skin. She tries not to laugh again, tries to sound stern as she asks, “What exactly was your plan? Show up naked and hairless at my door with a bouquet and hope I was so wowed by your transformation my legs fell open?”

“Something… embarrassingly close to that.”

He should be mortified, and Nesta feels somehow cheated that he’s not; he’s still grinning at her. 

“Well, it didn’t work,” she says crossing her arms. “It wouldn’t have worked even if I hadn’t gotten back early.” Maybe it’s mean, but he’s _still_ smiling, so she adds, coldly, “You did this for nothing.”

He shakes his head, so happy he looks drugged. “It wasn’t for nothing. I’d do this every day if I always got to see you laugh like that.”

The rasp of his voice, the warmth in his eyes, is somehow intimate, and Nesta _wants_ to hate it, desperately, but she feels something crumble instead. Cocky, confident Cassian is bad, but sincere, sweet Cassian is so, so much worse. There’s no way to disarm this one, no clear path back to the biting retaliation that makes up their usual interactions. Nesta feels it bearing down on her, all of it, his stupid warm smile and the stupid lengths he’s going through for what, some ridiculous gesture of goodwill towards her preferences? And how stupidly attracted to him she is, and how stupid and wonderful their bickering is. And how stupid and wonderful their _not_ bickering might be.

She exhales decisively, stands up and surveys the mess of wax splashes that Azriel and Rhys have left.

“First order of business, we’re going to finish this nonsense,” Nesta says with the authority of an Eldest Sister. “Or you’ll only be half-hairy, which is much weirder than hairy _or_ bald.”

Cassian’s eyebrows raise slightly, but he settles back onto his back, adjusting his wings accordingly, without a fight. “Whatever you say, princess.”

“Cauldron, Cas,” Nesta murmurs as she takes in how _much_ wax is currently bubbling in the heated pot on the dresser, “Were you going to wax your entire body?”

“That was the idea,” he says, finally a tad sheepish. “Rhysand likes to say you can’t go too far to make a romantic statement.”

Nesta huffs. “Well, firstly, Rhysand’s idea of a romantic statement is having his mate almost die in a chimney of human remains while fetching her own engagement ring, _before he’s even proposed,_ so I suggest never taking his advice on anything of the sort,” Cassian laughs, and Nesta makes a face at the wad of wax she collects on the end of the stirrer. It smells weird. “And secondly, just get me jewelry next time.”

“Next time?” He asks, even as he lets out a faint hiss when Nesta paints the hot wax on a patch of stray hair and presses a piece of cloth to it.

“Next time,” Nesta says, and she leans over and kisses him.

Cassian’s lips are slightly chapped, but Nesta rather likes the abrasiveness of them, and after a heartbeat of surprise they yield against hers, warm and hungry and—

And Nesta rips the cloth from his chest, taking the hair with it, and Cassian yells with pain into her mouth. He falls back laughing as he recovers, eyes watering.

“Cauldron, that hurts,” he says, breathless and flushed unusually happy for a man with a half-waxed chest. “You tricked me.”

“Watch this, I bet you’ll fall for it again,” Nesta says with a smirk, as she waxes another section of hair and leans toward his lips. He does, again and again, as Nesta kisses him and waxes him over and over, only occasionally breaking down to laugh at how ridiculous the situation is.

Rhys and Azriel listen outside the door, and are equally glad for their friends’ happiness as for their not having to finish waxing Cassian.


End file.
